Re: Vegetarianism Re: I'm a bit drunk

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

<snip>

When you're a veggie you've got to take what's on offer (which often
limits you to one or two menu options when eating out).

<shrug> I don't eat out. And I don't see why Quorn should be on the
menu at all, anywhere. There are plenty of `proper' foods that veggies
can eat, I do know that and I've enjoyed lots of good proper veggie
food in my time.

I've been vegetarian for almost 20 years and while veggie food has
improved over the years (I started out as having the same as meat eaters
without the meat to being able to find things made suitable for
vegetarians now) there is still a long way to go!

Vegetarian food is `food that's not meat'. The shops are full of `non
meat food'.

Food available now in the UK is generally poorer quality than it was 30
years ago.

So I'm not sure what you mean, unless you're talking about prepared
meals from the supermarket and similar?

On the other hand, I don't quite understand vegetarianism. No
objections, I just don't quite get it.


I can only talk for myself but I don't see why we should kill animals
when we can have a perfectly healthy diet without meat or fish!

I can only talk for myself but I don't see why we should consider
killing animals any different to killing vegetables.

If it's wrong to take life, then it's wrong to take life. But we have
to kill to eat just like pretty much any other animal - cows kill grass
to live, we kill cows to live just as crocodiles do, given half a
chance.

Why not?

I've often heard veggies explain that they don't see why they should
kill animals to eat, but I've never heard a veggie explain what the
problem with doing so might be.

Can you do so?

What objections are there to killing animals to eat? I don't
understand.

I know *one* semi-veggie who won't eat *farmed* meat - anything caught
from the wild's okay, though. That's a moral standpoint that I can get
my head round.

(in the same line, I don't like food crops grown in fields as a concept,
for all that most of the human race would starve to death pretty damned
quickly if we gave up on that sort of thing)

Nor do I see why we should think that we can have a perfectly healthy
diet without meat when we evolved as omnivores. Everything I've read
indicates that it's very very hard to get a good balanced diet without
meat and it's certainly nigh on impossible to get enough good quality
protein to maintain the body of a big strong man without meat.

Nor do I see any reason why we should think that there's anything wrong
with killing and eating animals.

I don't see why should humans, of all animals, not eat their natural
diet.

btw, the argument that it's kinder to the enviroment to be veggie than
omnivorous like me is fallacious: it takes more resources to grow a
balanced veggie diet than it does to grow a balanced omnivorous diet.
Or so I found out recently.

That's not why I'm veggie at all!

I didn't suggest that it was. I mentioned it because it's something
intriguing I found out recently.

I just don't see why an animal has to
be killed just for me to eat it

And I don't see why not. What's the objection? You're happy to eat
onions and cabbages that have been killed. Why not killed meat? Why
not behave like every other meat-eating species on the planet and eat
dead animal without a second thought?

and I don't like the taste of meat now
either!

I'm not trying to persuade you to stop being a veggie, you know.

I can't even eat, for example, beef and onion crisps because
they taste too much like meat!

I won't eat beef and onion crips because they're 'orrible. And I like
good beef well cooked.

Yes, yes, wheat beats beef on the environmental side if you take into
account water useage (as you'd expect - beef cattle were bred into
current form largely in well watered places, while wheat comes from the
arid and drought-prone Middle East). On the other hand, chicken beats
lentils on the environmental side, plenty of places don't have water
shortages, and there's almost no waste at all from a slaughtered pig.
Not like with most food crops, where there's a lot of waste material
that needs handling.

The waste from veggie stuff can be composted and used to help future
crops grow!

That doesn't tip the balance in favour of the inefficient plant crops;
and in any case: plant waste from industrial food proceessing plants is
generally not composted for agricultural use and it'd make poor quality
compost on its own in any case.

Those running the food processing factories obviously consider that it's
too expensive to do so; and aside from that, what you'd get wouldn't be
very high quality compost, unless you add a lot of other stuff to the
mix. A compost heap needs plenty of carbon and nitrogen. The carbon is
plentiful in lots of sorts of food plant waste, no worries there. But
you need something like urine for the nitrogen - or `household liquid
activator' as they call it on Gardener's Question Time (aka `What
husbands are for' - send him out to pee on the compost heap last thing
at night, gets it composting a treat, so we're told.)

The reason so much in the way of synthetic fertilizer has to be used to
grow plants is that by growing fields full of single plant crops, we are
upsetting the natural ecological balance of the planet. If you want
agriculture to work *properly*, you need animal input. Piss and ***,
blood and bonemeal - that's how to keep the soil healthy. And if you've
got the animals on the farm, it's insane not to eat them. (aside from
the dogs and horses, or so I think, not being Korean or French)

Blood and bonemeal waste from the slaughterhouse make one of the finest
fertilizers known to man.

So here's me, wanting a naturally balanced `organic' agriculture,
providing a good quality diet for all - can't be done if everyone's
veggie.


Rowland.

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